The history of Mississippi has several points of interest. Beginning, as far back as the early 1900’s, this history really grabbed my interest. I especially took interest in the early 1900’s prior to the Era of Progression. There was widespread illiteracy, segregation and the musical talent that were raised out of plantation living. By 1910 the arrival of the automobile’s movement began.
I 1890 A new Constitutions with stiff restrictions on voting occurred .A $2 a year tax was applied that blacks and poor whites could not pay. This resulted in 90% reductions in the number of blacks who voted. Mississippi finally became a progressive era by 1900. There were no paved highways, epidemics of contagious diseases, routinely lynching’s with local affairs controlled by courthouse rings. There was a widespread illiteracy and very few assets other than prime cotton land. Mississippi could not attract outside investments or European immigrations According to Wikipedia. After the 1900 the Jim Crow system was in total effect increasingly restrictive racial segregation laws. It was an economic disaster. The boll weevil infestation along with several flooding destroyed cotton crops. The loss of cotton crop caused most Africa American in the thousands to leave by train, boat. It was there hopes to head north because opportunities had steadily been closed off. Today if you travel the highways towards the southern parts of Missouri, cotton crops are still being grown and picked by some land owners.
The Great Migration by the 1940 and 1950’s the migration increased lied a half million people, three quarters of them were black. Prior to the progressive era some of the most recognized musical artist were from and actually rose in Mississippi: Bo Diddly, BB King and Muddy Waters. Each has made a mark in history as the leading musicians that are heard in various jazz and blues bars.
Mississippi the center of the music tradition in gospel, jazz ,rap R&B and blues and rock and roll. Bo Didly Born Dec 30, 1928 as Ellas Otha Bates known as “ Bo Didly.” From McComb, MS, was raised and adopted by his cousin .Songwriter musician, know particularly for his innovation and trademark rectangular guitar he died June 3,2008 of heart failure last words “ I’m going to heaven”. BB King : Born Sept 16, 1925 in Itta Bena, MS. Played on street corner, as many as four towns a night in his youth for dimes.
I have lived in Mississippi all my life and have had an opportunity to travel throughout the state. In doing so, I have observed several things that will important in this discussion. They are the music, the people, and the resources.
McMillen begins by tracing the roots of segregation in Mississippi beginning with common law and later evolving into state sponsored apartheid with the Plessey v. Ferguson decision and the new state constitution of 1890. The need for separation between the races arose out of feelings of “negrophobia” that overcame the white citizens of the South during the period of Jim Crow. Negrophobia was an overwhelming fear by white males in the South that if the races were in close proximity of each other the savage black men would insult the heavenly virtues of Southern white women. As a result black boys in Mississippi learned at an early age that even smiling at a white woman could prove dangerous. Although segregation was vehemently opposed by Black leaders when it was first instituted, by the 1890’s leaders such as Booker T. Washington began to emphasize self-help over social equality. The fact that Mississippi’s institutions were segregated lead to them being inherently unequal, and without a...
The book, Coming of Age in Mississippi is wrote by Anne Moody. In the book Anne Moody was known as Essie Mae. Essie Mae lived in a plantation with her parents in the first four years of her Childhood. Later on she and her mother moved away from the plantation. When author was in fourth grade she had to work after school and weekends in order to support the family. Essie works hard and does really good in school. During High School there is when Essie find out NAACP, and how they help to improve African Americans. She started to take noticing that no whites wanted to stop these violence act. When Anne can take all these problem any more, she decided to moved to New Orleans for few summers. She worked in order to save money for college. In her
Coming of Age in Mississippi is the amazing story of Anne Moody 's unbreakable spirit and character throughout the first twenty-three years of her life. Time and time again she speaks of unthinkable odds and conditions and how she manages to keep excelling in her aspirations, yet she ends the book with a tone of hesitation, fear, and skepticism. While she continually fought the tide of society and her elders, suddenly in the end she is speaking as if it all may have been for not. It doesn?t take a literary genius nor a psychology major to figure out why. With all that was stacked against her cause, time and time again, it is easy to see why she would doubt the future of the civil rights movement in 1964 as she rode that Greyhound bus to Washington once again.
“Coming of Age in Mississippi” an autobiography by Anne Moody gives a beautifully honest view of the Deep South from a young African American woman. In her Autobiography Moody shares her experiences of growing up as a poor African American in a racist society. She also depicts the changes inflicted upon her by the conditions in which she is treated throughout her life. These stories scrounged up from Anne’s past are separated into 4 sections of her book. One for her Childhood in which she partially resided on a plantation, the next was her High School experiences that lead to the next chapter of her life, college. The end of Anne’s remarkable journey to adulthood takes place inside her college life but is titled The Movement in tribute to the
Mississippi is known for a lot of things including their crops, it can also be found as the Home of Confederate and, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has made many of the states traditions. The people, places and, events tell the story of Mississippi. The Modern History of Mississippi has made it the beautiful and popular state it is today.
The social conditions throughout the era were extremely poor. Legal discrimination was around and African Americans were denied democratic rights and freedoms. The southern states would pass strict laws to normalize interactions between white people and African Americans. For example, Jim Crow signs were placed above regularly visited places by everyone, such as water fountains, public facilities, door entrances and exits, etc. Even the most basic rights such as drinking from a water fountain was taken away from African Americans. They would also have separate buildings for African
The Great Migration was a time where more then 6 million African Americans migrated North of the United States during 1910-1920. The Northern Parts of the United States, where African Americans mainly moved to was Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland. They migrated because of the work on railroads and the labor movement in factories. They wanted a better life style and felt that by moving across the United States, they would live in better living conditions and have more job opportunities. Not only did they chose to migrate for a better lifestyle but they were also forced out of their homes by unsatisfactory economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws. They were forced to work in poor working conditions and compete for
Riley B. King better known as B.B. King was born on September 16th 1925 to a family of sharecropping farmers near a small town named Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta. King's parents Albert and Nora Ella King separated when he was five years old and shortly after his mother moved to Kilmicheal Mississippi where Riley spent most of his time living with is grandmother. By age seven King was now working the field like a grown man. A couple of years later at the age of nine his mother died. King continued to live with his grandmother after his mother had past away. His grandmother was very religious and he attended church services with her. It was in the church where King begins to take an interest in music. He had dreams of becoming a gospel singer and learned how to play basic notes on the guitar from his preacher. In 1940 King's grandmother died and he had trouble making ends meet and eventually went to live with his father. (The King of Blues)
The Great Migration was the movement of two million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West between 1910 and 1940. In 1900, about ninety percent of African Americans resided in formed slave holding states in the South. Beginning in 1910, the African American population increased by nearly twenty percent in Northern states, mostly in the biggest cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland. African Americans left the rural south because they believed they could escape the discrimination and racial segregation of Jim Crow laws by seeking refuge in the North. Some examples of Jim Crow laws include the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks (“The History of Jim Crow). In addition, economic depression due to the boll weevil infestation of Southern cotton fields in the late 1910s and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 forced many sharecroppers to look for other emplo...
Most people know Mississippi for its music such as; gospel, blues, jazz music, and rock and roll. But it is much more than the creator of blues it is much deeper than that. Mississippi wasn’t Mississippi at first it was discovered by European travelers. The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of Hernando Desoto to who passed through in 1540. Another part of Mississippi was claimed by the French. They claimed territory that included Mississippi as part of their colony of New France and started settlement. Did you know a lot of Mississippi’s counties and parts are named after Indian tribes that were here hundreds of years ago? They included the Natchez, the Yazoo, the Pascagoula, and the Biloxi. Hundreds of years ago Mississippi was controlled by a lot of people. On December.10, 1817, the western portion of Mississippi territory became the state of Mississippi, the 20th state of the union. A lot of people think that Jackson was always the state capital it wasn’t. Natchez was the capital of Mississippi first; the capital was moved to Jacks...
The black migration gather everything that they have and start of the new century together, as a unit, with 204,000 individuals leaving in the first decade. Around World War I, the pace accelerated, and continue through the 1920s. In fact, by the 1930s, 1.3 million southerners were leaving to other regions. In the 1930s, the great depression, wiped out job opportunity, for all. Unfortunately, the affected ones were the African Americans, in the northern industrial belt, this caused a sharp reduction in migration. Furthermore, the second great migration began around 1940, as the country was gathering up to start entering World War
A civilization to me is people in an area coming together and learning how to work with one another. As they learned new things such as how to grow more food, and skills that will make their everyday lives easier the population starts to grow. The way people could advance in one skill gave them the opportunity to trade with each other for other goods, allowing them to become more urbanized. Every civilization is unique in it’s own way, each having cultural diversity in their music, art, and building styles.
Memphis is considered to be a dangerous city by many around the country with not many attractions besides Martin Luther king, jr. What they do not know is that Memphis is full of rich music and history. Various genres have made an impact on people’s daily lives such as gospel, soul, funk, blues, jazz, R&B, pop, country, and rap. Stax records were found in in 1957 which was known as satellite radio at the time. Stax has made a major impact on helping the lives of people in Memphis. Stax has overlooked the obstacles of color and racism by giving many artists of different races the opportunity they dreamed of. Stax has made a major impact by helping the lives of people in Memphis, breaking color and racism barriers, and most importantly by making music. (Stax Museaum)
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she “came of age” with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.